Venezuela’s Bolivarian government defends against rightist violence

By Tom Whitney

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government is facing its biggest challenge since his electoral victory on April 14, 2013 – still unrecognized by the U.S. government. Nationwide street protests coinciding with Venezuela’s “Youth Day” turned violent on February 10. 2014. Disruptions continued and two days later in Caracas swarms of masked demonstrators taunted police, ringed public buildings, destroyed official vehicles, and set fires. Gunfire left three people dead and over 70 wounded. Dozens were imprisoned.

Serious confrontations erupted in Tachira and Merida states, well known for harboring anti-government paramilitaries from nearby Colombia. Official spokespersons characterized the killings of two victims in Caracas with single shots from one gun as assassinations and, as such, provocations.

Disturbances emerging immediately after Maduro’s slim election victory caused 11 deaths. Uprisings then and now, observers say, followed a single script, that of casting Venezuela’s Bolivarian government as precarious, now because charismatic leader Hugo Chavez, who preceded Maduro, is gone. Powerbrokers within Venezuela’s still thriving capitalist sector aim at destabilization. The current turmoil has parallels with the failed, U.S. supported, anti-Chavez coup in 2002.

Washington officials, mindful of Monroe Doctrine traditions of dominating a continent, have little enthusiasm for the Bolivarian Revolution Maduro now heads. It is anti-imperialist; socialist; and, for the region, integrationist. And Venezuela has oil.

With student protesters and others in the streets, millions of U.S. dollars delivered over the past decade to groups aligned with Venezuela’s traditional centers of power and influence seem to be bearing fruit. The National Education for Democracy and the U.S. Agency for International Development served as conduits for funding, much of it directed at organizing students in private universities

Intermittently during the Chavez era and since, those students figured prominently in protests against inflation and shortages. Their demonstrations are big news for 85 percent of national media that is privately owned. Reports have surfaced that behind the scenes importers manipulate currencies and distributors hoard commodities.

Venezuela’s Unified Socialist Party, led by Maduro, made big gains in municipal elections on December 8, 2013. Opposition strategists took the message that elections aren’t helpful in their project of ousting the Bolivarians. Consequently, protesters’ rhetoric within weeks turned to “regime change.” Then violent confrontations materialized, spreading widely during the week of February 10. Whether thugs involved are students or infiltrators is unclear, but some admitted to payoffs.

The wealthy Henrique Capriles, the right wing presidential candidate in elections won by Maduro, condemned the violence. One effect of his dividing opposition ranks was to spotlight veteran hardliners in charge of the current protests, two in particular.

National Assembly deputy Maria Corina Machado, born into wealth, urged protesters to remain in the streets, blaming the government for the killings. She faced allegations of involvement last year in another destabilizing plot. Machado once visited the office of President George W. Bush in connection with her leadership of the U.S. funded Sumate group, notable for propelling the anti-Chavez referendum of 2004. She became a “Yale World Fellow,” according to Yale, partly because “Sumate’s network of volunteers grew to include more than 30,000 members from all over Venezuela.” Machado sent two sons to Yale, alma mater of both Bush presidents. In 2002 she signed a document expressing support for the coup government briefly in power then.

Leopoldo López, born into wealth, heads the rightist Popular Will Party. Facing an arrest warrant as intellectual author of the February 12 disturbances, López tried unsuccessfully to exit Venzuela. He graduated from Kenyon College in Ohio, a nursery for future CIA operatives, says Canadian – Cuban political writer Jean-Guy Allard. He attended Harvard’s Kennedy School. Working for the International Republican Institute in 2002 he led the coup plotters’ march on the presidential residence.

But now is not 2002: dissident military and police are not involved, security forces control the streets, and by the week’s end anti-government protests were losing steam. Government supporters marched by the thousands in Caracas on February 15.

The night before, President Maduro presented a multi-faceted program outlining plans for “a secure country;” demobilization of armed gangs; a “Movement for Peace and Living Together” in each state; nationwide sport, cultural, and musical tours; a “new communications (meaning TV) culture;” “maximum social discipline” in prisons; and action against “drug traffickers and paramilitaries entering the country.”

While the United Nations, Organization of American States, and European Union denounced violence and called for dialogue, the U.S. State Department condemned “weakening of democratic institutions in Venezuela.” U.S. Senator Marco Rubio accused the Maduro government of creating “an unprecedented wave of repression.” Secretary of State Kerry (Yale, 1966) on February 15 threatened “serious negative consequences” should Venezuela’s government succeed in arresting Lopez. That government expelled three U.S. Embassy officials the next day for reaching out to university students.

Foreign Minister Elías Jaua told reporters on February 17 that his government “confronts a fascist attack at the hands of groups trained specifically to cause violence”

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Powerful interests mobilize to end U.S. anti-Cuban blockade

By Tom Whitney

The U.S. economic blockade of Cuba, cruel and reviled across the globe, has persisted for as long as the period between the U.S. Civil War and World War I. But it may not last forever. Just recently, stirrings of disenchantment among powerful forces have cropped up nationally and in Florida, epicenter of Cuban émigré opposition to Cuba’s revolutionary government.

On February 11 the Atlantic Council released its poll on attitudes toward the blockade expressed during January. The Council surveyed 1000 people nationwide plus 617 Florida residents and 525 Latinos, all by telephone. The report became a main focus of news stories on blockade dissent appearing simultaneously.

Of those surveyed nationally, 56 percent – Latinos, 62 percent – want normalization of relations, 61 percent oppose travel restrictions, 62 percent OK U.S. business dealings with Cuba, and 61 percent oppose Cuba being designated a terrorist nation. Among Floridians offering opinions, 63 percent call for normal relations and 67 percent oppose both travel restrictions and the terrorist label. And 52 percent of Republicans want normalization, as do 64 percent of Miami-Dade County residents in Florida.

“The majority of Americans on both sides of the aisle are ready for a policy shift,” concludes the Atlantic Council. “Most surprisingly, Floridians are even more supportive …This is a key change from the past.” And “Economic arguments prove to be most convincing for normalization.”

The splash from this survey report coincided with other ripples. The Washington Post interviewed Cuban exile Alfonso Fanjul, “one of the principal funders of the U.S. anti-Castro movement” and someone, who with his brother, “amass[ed] one of North America’s great fortunes.” Fanjul discussed trips to Cuba in 2012 and 2013.

“I’d like to see our family back in Cuba,” he said, and “if there’s an arrangement within Cuba and the United States, and legally it can be done and there’s a proper framework set up and in place, then we will look at that possibility.” Cuban American businessman Paul Cejas traveled with Fanjul: “The embargo is really an embargo against America ourselves, because Americans cannot do business with Cuba, where there are incredible opportunities for growth.”

Ex-Florida governor and former blockade apologist Charlie Crist, Democratic candidate to be Florida’s next governor, announced a change of heart. Lifting the blockade, he said, “could help the Florida economy, creating more jobs in the state and allowing Florida businesses to sell goods and services to an island that has been largely closed to most commerce with the United States for more than 50 years.

On February 10 the Miami Herald published Senators Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) and Jeff Flake’s (R-AZ) op-ed piece “Time for a new Policy on Cuba.” Citing survey results a day before their release, they note that, “A majority of Americans, including Cuban-Americans, wants to change course,” and “so do we.”

While dismissing Cuba as repressive and failing economically, the senators argue that “Trade with Latin America is the fastest growing part of our international commerce… Rather than isolate Cuba with outdated policies, we have isolated ourselves …Current policy boxes U.S. entrepreneurs and companies out of taking part in any of this burgeoning Cuban private sector.”

Remarkably, news in November, 2013 that President Obama was questioning U.S. Cuban policies quickly became old news. At a Miami political fundraiser he had suggested that “in the age of the Internet, Google and world travel,” old policies “don’t make sense.”

This time, news of the survey triggered real discussion even though, significantly, its findings were not new. In fact, annual Gallup polling on Cuba since 1999 has consistently demonstrated nationwide majorities in favor of “re-establishing U.S. diplomatic relations” and ending the blockade. Other surveys yielded similar results. A Florida International University opinion poll in 2008 showed that “a majority of Cuban-Americans now favor ending the … economic embargo and restoring diplomatic relations” with Cuba, 55 percent and 65 percent, respectively.

In releasing its report, the Atlantic Council attached a remarkably forthright advocacy statement to its recitation of data. The report may be useful for having updated long established trends, but why did it command so much attention?

The Council is no bit player in establishment circles. Former Secretaries of State Dean Acheson and Christian Herter founded it in 1961 as a support mechanism for NATO. It maintains close ties with prominent U.S. and European NGO’s involved with diplomatic and security issues. Weapons manufacturers are corporate members. Directors, some honorary, include diplomatic, defense, and intelligence honchos like Henry Kissinger, James Schlesinger, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, George Shultz, Wesley Clark, Michael Hayden, and Robert Gates.

Perhaps now, with movers and shakers taking things in hand, change really is on the way. But a thorny detail may need attending to: Cuban leaders are unlikely to discuss big changes with U.S. leaders without, first, the Cuban Five political prisoners being sent home. That’s the opinion of Stephen Kimber, author of the only English language book (“What Lies across the Water”) on the case of the Five.

Some of the recent stories on changed attitudes allude to Cuban imprisonment of U.S. contractor Alan Gross – he violated Cuban laws – as accounting for U.S. intransigence on the blockade. The scenario thus comes into view, maybe, of an exchange of prisoners ushering in talks on re-establishing relations.

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CELAC Summit in Cuba reflects region’s altered power dynamics

By Tom Whitney

The II Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) opened in Cuba on January 28, 2014, birthday of Cuban national hero and Latin American integrationist Jose Marti. The 33 heads of states on hand represented all Western Hemisphere nations south of the Rio Grande River, the region Marti called “Our America.”

United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon and José Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States, attended as guests. The OAS, loyal to U.S. dictates, ejected revolutionary Cuba from its membership in 1963. By serving as CELAC president pro tem during 2013 and hosting this summit, Cuba made clear its return to the community of nations.

Cuban President Raul Castro opened the Summit and indirectly took note of OAS’ altered status in the region: “Step by step we are creating a [CELAC] that is currently recognized in the world as the legitimate representative of the interests of Latin America and the Caribbean.” CELAC has a “heritage of two hundred years of struggle for independence.” Its “ultimate goal” is “development of a spirit of greater unity amid diversity.”

Castro called for “creation of a common political space … where we can exploit our resources in a sovereign way and for our common wellbeing and utilize our scientific and technical knowledge in the interest of the progress of our peoples; where we can assert undeniable principles such as self-determination, sovereignty and sovereign equality of states.”

Observing that Latin America and the Caribbean is the “is the most unequal region in the planet,” he lamented the fact that the region’s overall 28.2 percent poverty rate co-exists with concentration of 32 percent of all income in the hands of 10 percent of the population. He detailed children’s lack of schooling and health care. Castro highlighted the region’s abundance of natural resources, fertile land, and water, pointing out that “all that wealth should become the driving force to eradicate inequalities.”

Castro had asked for a minute of silence in honor of late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who convened the founding CELAC congress in Caracas in 2011. Chile hosted the first summit in early 2013 after a term as president pro tem. Costa Rica becomes CELAC president following this summit. Responsibility for ongoing CELAC affairs rests with a committee comprising the past, current, and upcoming CELAC presidents and a Caribbean-area president. Foreign ministers and their staffs perform administration.

At its conclusion on January 29, the CELAC Summit declared the region a “zone of peace” subject to international law and principles of the United Nations Charter. Member states vowed to “banish forever the use of force and to seek a peaceful solution to controversies,” also “to respect the inalienable right of each state to choose its economic, political, social and cultural system.” Interference in the internal affairs of another country is off limits, as are nuclear weapons.

The Summit issued a far-reaching, 83-point “Declaration of Havana.” The document reviews purposes and precedents and ratifies measures supporting the sovereignty of states, food sovereignty, sustainable and coordinated regional development, and protection of civil society and private institutions. It calls for solutions to climate change, poverty and hunger, drug addiction, and flawed United Nations governance. CELAC backs Haiti reconstruction, Puerto Rican independence, streamlined foreign investment systems, and Great Britain’s return of the Malvinas Islands to Argentina, The organization seeks rights for indigenous people and migrants and demands that the U. S. economic blockade of Cuba stop.

The U.S. government, on the outside, was not entirely silent. Diplomat Conrad Tribble tweeted from the U. S. Interests section in Havana asking, “Is any journalist here for CelacCuba going to look for independent voices on Cuba’s reality? It would be worth the trouble.”

The Continental Forum for Promotion of Democracy, a “counter summit,” took place at Florida International University on January 25. Cuban exiles in the United States and opposition politicians and publicists from Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua attended. Journalist Jean-Guy Allard claims the group organizing the event, the Buenos Aires – based Center for Opening and Development of Latin America (CADAL), has CIA ties and is financed by the International Republican Institute. CADAL staged a Summit – related forum in Havana on January 28 joined by leaders of domestic opposition groups.

Editorializing, Mexico’s La Jornada news service judged that “CELAC’s success in pulling off its summit shows, essentially, a political – diplomatic turn-over in the continent…But governments have to work to consolidate this new deliberative political body for Latin America and the Caribbean and strengthen and maintain it, despite natural disagreements cropping up between governments and predictable attempts by U. S. diplomacy to distort this forum.”